Ultimatum, by Dorothy Parker

[murasakimuse.livejournal.com]

I'm weary of wearying love, my friend,
of worry and strain and doubt;
Before we begin, let us view the end,
and maybe I'll do without.
There's never the pang that was worth the tear,
And toss in the night I won't-
So either you do or you don't, my dear,
Either you do or you don't!

The table is ready, so lay your cards
And if they should augur pain,
I'll tender you ever my kind regards
And run for the fastest train.
I haven't the will to be spent and sad;
My heart's to be gay and true-
Then either you don't or you do, my lad
Either you don't or you do!


It's amazing when you find a poem that totally captures exactly how you feel or what you yearn to say. The trouble with poetry is this however; when you find the exact thing you want to convey to a certain party, you find that a lot of the time they don't "get it" or horribly misinterpret it. Especially if they don't have a poetic bent. I suppose the argument could go "Well if they aren't poetic, screw em."

Unfortunately if you argued that point in those words, I wouldn't find you terribly poetic either.

from the faces at five o'clock

[youfuckingbitch.livejournal.com]

That Night It Rained

cell by cell
pore by pore
we study each other
so as best
to know
where to lay the mine
of each, the other's insecurity

like hobbled dancers
we step delicately
around the debris of love

-kaushalya bannerji

(no subject)

[wiredkitten.livejournal.com]

Stanley Plumly -- from The Marriage in the Trees


( Souls of Suicides as Birds )

Lazarus at Dawn

Your whole life you are two with one taken
away. The inadequate air and fire,
the inadequate joy, the darknesses
of the room so gathered at the window
as to fly, wing on wing on wing open
against the glass, opening and closing,
bone, blood and wrist. But nothing happens but
exhaustion and evidence of the eyes,
the red-gold cloud-break morning beginning

with the objects that floated in the dark
draining back to the source, floating back to
the surface tension of things, those objects
struck the way the first light starts suddenly,
then slowly in relief across the room,
the window's shadow garden comes back one
last time once more from the leaves. Waking now,
the door half-open, open, the doorway's
blindness of blackness silence to be filled.

A man was sick, a sickness unto death.
All he wanted to do was to lie down,
let the light pick him apart like the dust.
He wrapped himself, in his mind, in his own
absence. He did not want to hear the rain,
with its meaning, nor the moment after
rain, nor the sound of Jesus weeping, nor
the dreaming, which is memory, though he
lay a long time cold, head against the stone.

You see the wind passing from tree to tree,
thousands of green individual leaves
silver and fluid at the surfaces,
the long nothing narrative of the wind.
The wind is the emptiness and fullness
in one breath, and the holding of that breath,
restlessness and stillness of the spirit.
You see your dead face in the gray glass close,
and see that it is already too late,

that death's blood nakedness clothed white is smoke,
the father standing in the doorway white,
whom you see in part, the way the morning
gathering is part in the slow degrees
of rectitude, a kind of twilight dawn.
Nothing is said, though he knows you love him.
Nothing is said, though you know he loves you.
Longing, as a sickness of the heart, is
invisible, incurable, endless.


( Red Somersault )

Do Not Go Gentle Into that Good Night by Dylan Thomas

[pyros-are-fun.livejournal.com]

Do Not Go Gentle Into that Good Night
by Dylan Thomas

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

(no subject)

[e-b-browning.livejournal.com]

Do Not Go Gentle Into that Good Night
by Dylan Thomas

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

from Perihelion volume IV, issue 1

[youfuckingbitch.livejournal.com]

Mix Tape for Valentine, Nebraska

i. First the clatter of the last four bowling
pins: the svelte mechanical arm
that rights them, like crated eggs,
precise and white-bellied: pitcher of beer
on the table: I retie my shoes: outside:
the humid night: insects flock
a dusty halo on the Exit sign:


ii. loose bulb and radio static: windows
down all the way to the farmhouse:
wind against teeth: down the back road
where no new mailbox isn't smashed:
a fist through the night: moving:


iii. a song about Jesus the stoop-shouldered man
sings all day on the corner: toy guitar
on his knee: his voice struggling the ship
out of a long necked bottle:


iv. splint of blackthorn under my tongue:
the taste of blue and green and copper:
noon and the mail comes, three bills
and a postcard I read twelve times:
the shadows all sound different here:


- allison titus

(no subject)

[iamkatia.livejournal.com]

BULVAN

In Memory of David Lerner, poet

A bulvan raging
with the whole
post-holocaustic
garbage-culture in him
rude/radiant, crude/clarifying, smooth/smutten
with the dregs
like most of us
driven or bent
on rising from
the fallen sparks
standing the drunken
or junken street
on its feet and
sending it home
with a poem in its ear

Now let's see him there:
another accident that wasn't
another suicide who was suicided
another poet the system's good-riddanced
because, among other things, he believed
in socialized medicine

I tell you, as a member of
the League of Revolutionaries for a New America,
LRNA by acronymic name,
the junk that murdered David Lerner is the same
that cuts evicts starves and kills
people everywhere these days,
and you know its name.

So don't just lie there, harps.
His big bear hulk needs psalms of flame
to get him home

Remember his gutsongs
and the poet from whom he came.


by Jack Hirschman

J.R.R. Tolkein: "Cat"

[gl-oriana.livejournal.com]

The fat cat on the mat
may seem to dream
of nice mice that suffice
for him, or cream;
but he free, maybe,
walks in thought
unbowed, proud, where loud
roared and fought
his kin, lean and slim,
or deep in den
in the East feasted on beasts
and tender men.
The giant lion with iron
claw in paw,
and huge ruthless tooth
in gory jaw;
the pard dark-starred,
fleet upon feet,
that oft soft from aloft
leaps upon his meat
where woods loom in gloom --
far now they be,
fierce and free,
and tamed is he;
but fat cat on the mat
kept as a pet
he does not forget.

Dance Of Chances

[jennylynn1689.livejournal.com]

In that last dance of chances
I shall partner you no more.
I shall watch another turn you
As you move across the floor.

In that last dance of chances
When I bid your life goodbye
I will hope she treats you kindly.
I will hope you learn to fly.

In that last dance of chances
When I know you’ll not be mine
I will let you go with longing
And the hope that you’ll be fine.

In that last dance of chances
We shall know each other’s minds.
We shall part with our regrets
When the tie no longer binds.


By: Robin Hobb (i luv her books)

(no subject)

[agata.livejournal.com]

A Poem for the End of the Century Czeslaw Milosz

When everything was fine
And the notion of sin had vanished
And the earth was ready
In universal peace
To consume and rejoice
Without creeds and utopias,

( Read more... )